


the way you wear your heart, hold my heart

by meritmut



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ben Solo Lives, Communication, Developing Relationship, F/M, Other: See Story Notes, Praise Kink, Recovery, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:00:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24396169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meritmut/pseuds/meritmut
Summary: Rey doesn’t recoil. She studies him, still caressing his cheek with absent affection. Ben focuses on the sensation, letting his whole world narrow down to the rough pads of her fingers against his skin.“You know,” she says eventually, casually like she doesn’t hold his flayed and beating heart in her callused hands. “We don’t have to do this.”
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo
Comments: 28
Kudos: 153





	the way you wear your heart, hold my heart

**Author's Note:**

> between the thing that inspired this (someone saying "Ben Solo is a sub who thinks he should be a dom") and the thing that probably would've inspired something else if not this (Ben Solo as an exploration of the damage caused by toxic masculinity (just not in the way antis think he is)), Ben's brain is not a good place and his internal monologue reflects that in various ways, so....tread carefully?
> 
> that said, it's soft as shite

He’s so caught up in the sound of her laughter, so delighted and just a little bit intoxicated by her infectious joy, that it isn’t till she rolls over to face him that he realises the peril of their situation.

Or rather,  _ his  _ situation. Because while Rey is the picture of ease beside him, all bright eyes and flushed cheeks as she sprawls out on the bed, luxuriating in the space that’s  _ all theirs  _ for the night, this is the first time Ben has been in bed with another person, and though they’re fully clothed—and even though Rey is the only woman with whom he has ever even  _ thought _ about doing this—he’s mortifyingly uncertain of how to proceed.

It’s not his lack of experience that stymies him, exactly. It had been his own choice, after all, to abstain from intimacy of any kind, even after he’d fled to Ren in the wake of the temple’s destruction. Ostensibly he had been free to indulge whatever _urges_ took him, though he knew it would mean his master’s scorn and censure, but by denying those urges he’d found, for the first time in his life, a measure of control. _He_ had determined, for the most part, who touched him; who saw him unmasked. _He_ had chosen to keep the physical world at a distance, to seal his face and body away behind armour and to channel his baser instincts into the pursuit of a greater destiny; into becoming the kind of warrior who knew no master. His mind may not have been his own but this way, at least, he could be master of his own flesh.

And so, little by little, he had buried himself alive, until he forgot what it was to have those needs at all, and he had not missed them. Even as a padawan he hadn’t had much interest in the adolescent fumblings of his peers, so it hadn’t felt like much of a sacrifice to swear off something he had never really wanted anyway.

It’s not the inexperience that causes him to freeze up now, but the sense of helplessness it invokes: the awareness that he is on the back foot, that this is something in which he has no control at all.

Snoke’s  _ teaching  _ lingers still, even now, more than a year since his death. There’s a part of Ben that still speaks with his voice, whispers that if he cannot master his own actions—if he cannot even control himself—then what kind of man is he?

The sense of inadequacy is a bucket of cold water over his desire. His breathing quickens as the anxiety heightens and he devotes a moment to getting himself back under control, fixing his stare on the tantalising strip of skin visible where the collar of Rey’s tunic falls open, mostly so he doesn’t have to look her in the eye as he prays for inspiration to come.

“Ben?”

Slender fingers curve around his jaw, her thumb smoothing over his cheek with the gentlest touch. She guides his chin up to encourage him to look at her, searching his face when he finally meets her gaze.

“Where’ve you gone, there?”

Humiliation burns through him; he can’t find the words to tell her.

She knows she is his first in all things, just as he is hers, but for some reason the fact that this is new for both of them offers scant comfort. He has no doubt that  _ he  _ would enjoy whatever they did together; it never even crosses his mind to question that. Rey is bold, and intuitive, and endlessly curious—and even if she weren’t he would love her touch because it’s  _ her,  _ whereas he...he can’t be that for her. He doesn’t know what she likes, or how to show her what  _ he  _ likes, or how to take command of the situation the way he had in the most shameful of his fantasies, the ones that always left a bitter aftertaste in his throat and a leaden weight in his stomach. He can’t make this good in the way it should be—the way that she deserves.

_ Who do you think you are?  _ The whispers turn mocking.  _ Daring to touch her? Daring to imagine you might be enough? She needs a man, not a frightened boy. She needs more than you can give. _

He braces for her reaction when his thoughts bleed across the bond, anticipating pity or disgust or contempt—or some mix of all three. Her hazel eyes pierce him to the bone and  _ Force, _ she’s so beautiful his chest hurts, he can’t look away even though it might kill him to watch her recoil now: he can’t move, can’t even close his eyes, can do nothing but lie beside her and wait for the blow to fall.

But Rey doesn’t recoil. She studies him, still caressing his cheek with absent affection. Ben focuses on the sensation, letting his whole world narrow down to the rough pads of her fingers against his skin.

“You know,” she says eventually, casually like she doesn’t hold his flayed and beating heart in her callused hands. “We don’t have to do this.”

Ben blinks.

“I mean it. I mean—I’m sure it would be good, once we figured it out, but...I’d be just as happy going to get dinner.” She drums her fingertips lightly on his jaw, pursing her lips in exaggerated thought. “That little place down the street that we passed smelled so good, we could—what?”

She stares askance at him: he realises he’s been shaking his head.

“No. I mean—yes, we should go there, later, but...I want this.” He forces himself not to look away from her. “I want you. So much. If you...if you still want me.”

He struggles to believe it, even now. Even when she says the words, out loud and through the bond: even when she presses them into his bare skin with her lips and tongue like she’s trying to mark him as hers, the voice that tells him he is unlovable is louder still.

“I do,” Rey assures him. “Very much. I want us to figure this out together. That’s what I thought we were doing. But...” she frowns. “Not if it won’t be good for you.”

He stares at her, baffled. “It will. Rey...it’s you. Of  _ course _ it will.”

“Babe, you look like you’re about to throw up.”

For a second, Ben wonders if he might. Rey doesn’t push, though, simply waits with practiced patience while he takes a few deep steadying breaths and struggles to translate the storm of shame and frustration inside him into words, all the while keeping him grounded with her touch.

“I want to make it good for  _ you _ . But I don’t know what to do.”

Confusion colours her gaze. “Neither do I? But I want to learn. And...you don’t have to  _ do  _ anything at all.” A devilish gleam appears in her eyes. “I know the logistics. You can just lie there and let me handle that bit, and after...” she waggles her eyebrows suggestively and Ben can’t help but smile. Her obstinate, down-to-earth optimism is as irresistible as the rest of her but it’s not enough to assuage the insecurity; not enough to silence the gnawing fear that to relinquish his power and let her  _ handle it  _ would be the most humiliating thing of all.

The ghosts in his head remind him that he was once Kylo Ren, knight of the Force, warlord of the First Order. He was feared, and loathed, and  _ obeyed.  _ He did not submit, not even to his own inexperience.

He doesn’t know how to silence that voice.

And he doesn’t know how to explain it to her.

Ben brings a hand up to cradle her face, mirroring the way she holds him, and lets her  _ feel  _ it instead.

A myriad of emotions flicker across her features in quick succession—she looks dumbfounded at first, then stricken, and finally her eyes narrow.

“We’re not going into  _ battle,  _ Ben.” He winces: she looks almost  _ angry  _ now. “This isn’t—this isn’t a  _ fight.” _

He lowers his head, embarrassed. Even when he tries to mitigate the damage of his own failings, he ends up making it worse. Is there anything he can’t fuck up?

_ I’m a Solo,  _ he thinks bitterly.  _ Making things a struggle is what we do. _

Sensing his discomfort—and probably that he’s a beat away from bolting for the door—Rey works one of her long legs in between his and uses the leverage to pull herself closer. In the space between their bodies she creates a sanctuary that smells of her; a place where hers is the only voice that matters.

“I get it,” she tells him quietly, tilting her cheek into his hand in a way that warms his heart. “Feeling like everything is a mountain to climb, or an enemy to fight. I get it. I lived that way, too.”

Hammers and nails, Ben thinks. For a weapon, every problem was a war.

_ He _ had been the weapon, his world a narrow continuum of strength and weakness, dominance and defeat. Broken and reforged into a vessel of violence by a master to whom he had never been more than a puppet, a rabid dog prized for his instability and mindless brutality, in his desperation for Snoke’s approval he had willingly twisted himself into something monstrous. He knows, now, what a hollow waste those years had been—better he’d been dead, he thinks sometimes, and in many ways he was—but he is not free of their shadow yet.

“I have to remind myself that I don’t live like that anymore,” Rey goes on. “And neither do you. Will you let me help you remember?”

He nods against her palm, turns his head so he can kiss the meat of her thumb.

“You do,” he rasps. “Every day.”

She smiles. “Good. So if we approach this not as a battle, or a—a  _ conquest, _ but just...a thing to figure out together, would that be okay?”

Ben’s heart is so full he thinks it might burst. He can’t resist—he surges forward to kiss her, eliciting a startled laugh from her as he tips Rey onto her back, trying to pour everything he can’t say into the movement of his mouth against hers. She kisses him back hungrily, her laughter dissolving into a whimper when he presses her body down into the shitty hotel bed that is, at least for tonight, theirs.

“Rey...” he murmurs, tearing himself away from her mouth so he can dot kisses along her jawline, all the way up to her ear and back again.

“Yeah?” Rey seems intent on wrapping every inch of herself around him, bringing her legs up and hooking them over his hips to better align their bodies, and Ben’s eyes just about roll back in his skull at the sudden blaze of  _ heat  _ against his groin. She hones in on the reaction like a lothwolf to blood and rocks her hips into his again, snickering at the ragged curse that tumbles from his lips.

_ “Sweetheart.” _

She falls still, grinning unabashedly. “Mmhm?”

Ben pulls back and props himself up on one elbow so he can look down at her, this magnificent creature with her chestnut hair fanned out over the pillows and her skin gleaming in the amber light, every freckle positively crying out for his mouth. He knows he’s utterly, embarrassingly moon-eyed for her, but there’s nothing new about that and for once he can’t bring himself to be ashamed of it.

“I love you,” he tells her solemnly, hardly able to get the words past the lump of his heart in his throat.

Rey’s lips part in wonder. her eyes go glassy, and slowly—as if afraid he might disappear right in front of her—she takes her hand from his shoulder and moves it to cup his face again, tracing the bow of his lower lip with the lightest of touches. He kisses her fingertips, his heart squeezing when he hears her breath catch.

“You love me?” she echoes, her voice barely more than a whisper. Awe and delight play over her lovely features and Ben curses himself for not telling her much, _ much _ sooner. He ducks down to kiss her again and she rises to meet him with eager joy, tugging him over and above her until he can brace himself on his elbows and knees, careful to avoid pinning her hair with his arms.

“I love you,” he says again, kissing the tip of her nose, then the bridge, then her right cheek— “I love you—” He kisses her left cheek, then her brow, then her temples one after the other, interspersing each brush of his lips with  _ I love you’s  _ until Rey plants both hands on his face and tugs him down to claim his mouth and silence him in one move.

He goes willingly, as he always will, and when they finally pull apart again they’re both short for breath. She’s beaming, her eyes dancing with mischief and affection as she sneaks her hands beneath his shirt, and Ben groans at the sensation of her blunt nails scraping lightly over his skin. Overcome, he buries his face in her neck, working his arms beneath her back as he breathes in the intoxicating scent of her all around.

“I’m glad,” she says softly, bringing one hand back up to play with the fine hair at the base of his neck. He can feel her heartbeat where their bodies press together and it helps him slow his breathing down, slipping out of his own skin and sinking into the heady peace of the bond. “That you love me.”

There’s no pretence or pride in her voice—there never is, when it’s just the two of them, she can be so proud and stubborn when she wants to be but here in the world they create between them she’s just Rey, forthright and fearless despite her own insecurities, and it shames him even more that he can’t meet her halfway.

He can try, though. At the very least, for her, he can try.

“I love you so much it terrifies me,” he mumbles into her shoulder. “And I hate that I can’t be everything you need.”

Her grip tightens in his hair; it’s probably intended as a tacit reprimand but Ben has to stifle a whine at the jolt of pleasure it sends through him.

_ “Ben. _ You can, and you  _ are.  _ All I need is you, here with me, trusting me and letting me in. That’s all.” Rey scratches his scalp gently, sending shivers singing down his spine. “And I know we’re not going to be amazing at it, right away. I know that. I’ve got no fucking clue what I’m doing either. But…you were there for me, when I was alone. You saw me, when no one else did. You’re already being what I need. You have been for a long time.”

He’s crying, Ben realises. Her neck is damp and he’d worried briefly that he’s been drooling over her, but the tears are flowing freely now and it’s all he can do to hold back a sob, as her words reach inside and heal his deepest wound.

He takes a long, shuddering breath, and hugs her all the tighter.

“I love you,” she continues in a shaky voice. “And you’re doing so good. Will you let me be what you need, now?”

_ These  _ words reach somewhere else entirely—it’s as if there’s a golden cord strung between his ears and his cock, allowing Rey’s soft praise to travel in a direct path southwards. Ben basks in her approval even as he hungers for more; more of her words, her touch, her kisses, more of these moments when they could be the only two people left in the galaxy.

Finally lifting his head up from her shoulder, he meets her eyes and nods.

He’ll let her do anything.

Quick as a flash Rey has him on his back. His hands fly to her hips instinctively, holding her steady as she grins wolfishly down at him. Her hair falls in a dark cloud around her face, a veil between them and the rest of everything, and the last of Ben’s nerves and embarrassment bleed away when she shifts until she’s straddling him and flattens one hand over his heart, a subtle pressure that he couldn’t throw off if he wanted to.

“Good.”


End file.
